No one expected Pierre Gasly on pole position at the Italian Grand Prix. Yet, the performance of the Alpine A526 is no accident. Several factors perfectly combined at Monza.
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You probably had to look quite far back in the predictions to find Pierre Gasly among the candidates for pole position at Monza. Alpine had certainly shown encouraging signs since the start of the weekend, but to beat Mercedes, McLaren, and Ferrari on a flying lap was a huge step.
However, the Frenchman’s pole was not built on a stroke of luck. Several elements combined to place the A526 exactly in the window it needed. And while the favorites did not all maximize their potential, Alpine practically left nothing on the table.
A weakness turned into a strength
The first element lies in the very characteristics of the A526. Since the start of the season, Alpine has suffered notably from a lack of downforce that penalizes it on circuits where aerodynamic performance is key.
At Monza, this weakness becomes much less of a handicap. Even better, it can turn into an advantage.
With its long straights, heavy braking, and relatively rare fast corners, the Italian circuit primarily rewards aerodynamic efficiency. You need to maintain enough downforce to attack braking zones and high-speed corners, but every point of drag saved gains a lot in top speed.
Yet the A526 seems naturally low-drag. Where Alpine usually pays for its lack of aerodynamic load, it benefits here from an efficient car on the straights. The ratio between downforce and drag matches much better the demands of Monza. The Alpine was also modified for the Italian track at the front wing level (see below) and the DRS fairing.
This is not entirely unusual: very low downforce circuits have in the past allowed some mid-field cars to shake up the hierarchy.
The Mercedes engine also plays its role
Added to this aerodynamic efficiency is another important asset: the Mercedes power unit.
On a circuit where the time spent at full throttle is considerable, having a powerful engine obviously represents an advantage. Power alone does not explain the pole – other cars equipped with the German V6 did not all achieve it – but it perfectly complements the characteristics of the Alpine.
The A526 therefore had a combination particularly suited to Monza: low drag and plenty of power available during long acceleration phases.
The Zandvoort upgrade begins to pay off
We must also look at the upgrades introduced a week earlier in the Netherlands.
Alpine had brought a significant upgrade to Zandvoort that Gasly had not yet been able to fully exploit. The very particular Dutch track was clearly not the ideal place to measure its benefits.
At Monza, the picture changed.
“I don’t think we really got the best out of the package at Zandvoort. It’s a bit of a special circuit. But we came here and the car responds very well,” explained Steve Nielsen, Alpine’s managing director, to Sky Sports.
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More than just adding downforce, these upgrades seem to have improved the balance of the A526 and offered Gasly a more predictable car. Alpine then refined its setup throughout the sessions to give him the confidence needed to attack.
This is particularly important at Monza. Performance is not built only on the straights: you must be able to delay braking as much as possible while maintaining enough stability, then confidently commit the car through the fast Ascari and Parabolica corners. This is what Gasly was able to do on Saturday, from Q1 onwards.
A perfectly calculated slipstream
This is probably where Alpine made its best move.
At Monza, slipstreaming can represent several tenths depending on the car’s position and the gap with the car ahead. But getting the right slipstream is a delicate exercise: too close, the car loses downforce in corners; too far, the straight-line benefit disappears.
Alpine chose to take a risk by sending its cars to the back of the pack for their last attempt. This position potentially offered the best slipstream but exposed Gasly and Colapinto to two dangers: not crossing the line before the session ended or having their lap ruined by a yellow flag caused by a car ahead of them.
Both Alpines finally launched their lap with about ten seconds to spare.
And Gasly found himself ideally placed behind Lewis Hamilton.
The slipstream gave him the extra gain he needed on the straights without compromising his lap in the corners. He then executed the rest perfectly to beat Russell by only six hundredths.
“We managed the gaps well. We managed the slipstreams well. The drivers made no mistakes,” summarized Nielsen. “And the time is clearly in the car, because both cars were quite fast.”
The final ingredient: the favorites’ missteps
Alpine did not suddenly become the fastest car on the grid. Monza simply created a conjunction of circumstances particularly favorable to the A526. While the French team perfectly executed its qualifying, its pole is also explained by the mistakes of its main rivals.
Russell probably had the fastest Mercedes: adding his best sectors would have given a lap 0.155 s faster than Gasly’s. But his preparation for the last attempt was disrupted by Antonelli and Verstappen, while he also suffered from wheel lock-ups.
McLaren, for its part, badly managed slipstreams and tire preparation, with additional battery management problems and a mistake by Piastri at the first braking zone.
Ferrari had an equally messy session, notably in the coordination between Hamilton and Leclerc, while Red Bull was handicapped by a technical problem preventing Verstappen’s car from running at the correct ride height.
In a qualifying decided by a few hundredths, Alpine also won because it was the only one to put all the pieces of the puzzle together.
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